Hybrid View

Implementing/Administering Zimbra Open Source Edition

Hi there,

Not sure how easy this will be to answer but I'm looking to implement a new Zimbra Open Source server for our business and I'm looking for some advice/guidance on how admin resource required for the server. This is what I'm looking at...

Either installing Ubuntu Server 10/12.04.LTS and Zimbra Open Source Edition 8.0 seperatley or via an appliance, looking at the Vmware appliance or Turnkey (although Turnkey bundles with Open Source v.5 so I'f then have to upgrade).

The server would only be supporting around 120 mailboxes, 50 of which would belong to users and the rest would be accessed by various in-house server apps to send/recieve mail.

All of our mail solutions thus far have been externally hosted so my main question is how much Admin time is going to be required for Open Source Edition (with Clam AV + SPAM Assasin etc) as a business solution.

Either installing Ubuntu Server 10/12.04.LTS and Zimbra Open Source Edition 8.0 seperatley or via an appliance, looking at the Vmware appliance or Turnkey (although Turnkey bundles with Open Source v.5 so I'f then have to upgrade).

The "Turnkey Appliance" is nothing to do with Zimbra apart from the obvious ZCS software, I'd suggest you install Zimbra on a new instrall of your chosen distribution - my advice would be to use CentOS (and install the RHEL build) but obviously use whatever you feel comfortable with.

Originally Posted by kookastu

The server would only be supporting around 120 mailboxes, 50 of which would belong to users and the rest would be accessed by various in-house server apps to send/recieve mail.

All of our mail solutions thus far have been externally hosted so my main question is how much Admin time is going to be required for Open Source Edition (with Clam AV + SPAM Assasin etc) as a business solution.

The answer to this would be a question, what is your current mail server and how much time do you spend administering that? There is effectively no effort needed to manage the anti-spam system in Zimbra unless you have any specific spam problem, the basic configuration works well with a few possible tweaks. In addition, once your initial configuration is complete then there shouldn't be much daily maintenance required - apart from your backup and (disaster) recovery strategy and that's something you'll need to test yourself.

Sure, I mentioned the Turnkey appliance mainly for the ZCS part of it on the off-chance it sparked any additional advice on the upgrading of ZCS through this appliance from v5 to v7/8, but I can raise on a seperate Forum if it's not appropriate here.

As previously mentioned up until now our mail server(s) have been externally hosted/managed and so this will be the first mail solution we'll have to install/configure and maintain. Other than just creating/deleting mailboxes and resetting passwords, I was curious about any other daily tasks Zimbra may require. As for backup, I'm not sure how easy this is going to be with Open Source Edition

Our current solution is a hosted ZCS Network Edition and I'm aware that we'll lose a number of features by implementing the open source edition but the cost saving potential appears to override the features/functionality.

Sure, I mentioned the Turnkey appliance mainly for the ZCS part of it on the off-chance it sparked any additional advice on the upgrading of ZCS through this appliance from v5 to v7/8, but I can raise on a seperate Forum if it's not appropriate here.

There should be no problem using that appliance (nor upgrading ZCS on it) as it's on a supported platform and my only reason for suggesting something different is that you have control over what is initially install and which update repositories you use.

Originally Posted by kookastu

As previously mentioned up until now our mail server(s) have been externally hosted/managed and so this will be the first mail solution we'll have to install/configure and maintain. Other than just creating/deleting mailboxes and resetting passwords, I was curious about any other daily tasks Zimbra may require. As for backup, I'm not sure how easy this is going to be with Open Source Edition

You mentioned 'hosted' in your first post and that doesn't necessarily imply 'managed' to my obtuse thought processes. You'll obviously lose the NE features but they may not be of great importance to you, I guess? Daily maintenance tasks should be fairly minimal once you've configured your server, creating and deleting mailboxes takes a moment or two, changing password shouldn't really be necessary if you have a good password security policy with limited life passwords - the users then change it. Passwords may need to be reset if a user forgets their password and again it's moments to do that. The major work you'll have to do is if problems occur because of a) a bug; b) user training; c) explaining specific features to users or any 'attack' against your server - that would cover spam or direct DDoS attacks and obviously they are difficult to quantify. If you have the choice I'd suggest your server be kept behind a NAT router/firewall and that will limit your exposure. Check around the forums on what others do for security and see if any of their solutions may be of use.

Originally Posted by kookastu

Our current solution is a hosted ZCS Network Edition and I'm aware that we'll lose a number of features by implementing the open source edition but the cost saving potential appears to override the features/functionality.

You can get most, if not all, of that functionality from the OSS version with suitable software but that would involve further time and effort to maintain. To my mind the most important 'missing' feature is the backup/restore (there are commercial products to do that) - there are examples/scripts in the forums that cover those procedures and you'd have to investigate what would be the best for your environment and try them (including a disaster recovery) to see what's best for you.

I'm sure you'll get other suggestions from forum members so feel free to post any further questions you may have, just add them to this thread for the moment as it would keep it all in one place for now.